You guys who state that the only way to knock Google off the top spot is via a big company with lots of money are missing the whole essence of what the internet is.
It's all about userbility. Google is the search overlord, the queen bee, not because she is evil, but because she is clean, quick and easy to use.
I argue that the decline of Google (if an event should ever occur) would come from internal problems, not an external threat.
Let's look at a few case studies:
#1 Yahoo! The classic example of failure and lack of self-indentity. Back in the day Yahoo! was as Google is today. What happened? It's site became loaded with SHIT, too many links and offshoots, and became overcrowed. Google tried to launch a similiar style homepage (myGoogle or some shit - which they are now cancelling. Why? Because people want a search engine not a fucking portal)
Anyway, Yahoo was a mess. Google stepped in...
#2 Myspace. The epitome of absolute failure. You newfags may not remember, but pre-2006 Myspace was the social media god. Like Yahoo! Myspace made the failure to clearly identify itself of what it IS. It attempted to become a portal and as a consequence the site became crowded, unresponsive and buggy. Myspace was a mess. Facebook stepped...
Both Yahoo! and Myspace were been perceived as invincible back in the day. So, behind all this gibberish, what am I trying to say? Firstly: behind all this multi-billion dollar shit we are still only looking at some HTML. A webpage. Nothing more, nothing less. It takes a fraction of a second to turn it off.
People can and do move on if poor userbility becomes an issue. If they skew their natural search results to the extent that it's loaded with ads (I believe they in danger of heading this way) people will move away to something simple, clean and userfriendly. But a demise isn't definite. The decline however would be slow and limited, especially now that Android has been taken up with open arms.
Just my views.
